Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus and the creator of the popular Rift VR headset that kicked off the VR movement for PC gaming, has announced that he’s working on a new head-mounted display (HMD) that is being “driven” by military requirements.
Details are a bit light, but he made the announcement during a casual fireside chat at the 2024 Augmented World Expo (AWE). “I’m actually building a new headset right now,” Luckey said during the panel. “It’s driven by military requirements, but it’s also going to be used for non-military stuff. It’s really cool, it’s really something.”
As a VR pioneer who created Oculus in 2012, which Meta/Facebook acquired for $2 billion in 2017, Luckey co-founded Anduril Industries, a military defense technology company, shortly after he departed from Facebook. By the sounds of it, the new headset is being built specifically for unknown military purposes.
The odds are that we’re talking about some form of simulation (for vehicle or on-foot) that would translate to non-military use – the sorts of VR games and apps we see today. However, since the arrival of the first Oculus Rift, we’ve seen many VR and AR headsets from Meta, Sony, HTC, and even Apple, so whatever this becomes, it would need to bring something new to the table to stand out.
Interestingly, this isn’t the only piece of hardware that Luckey has been developing. He recently announced the ModRetro, a handheld that plays Game Boy and Game Boy Color cartridges with a display that is readable in full sunlight. As a lifelong Game Boy fan, the ModRetro is a passion project through and through.